Shoppes at Sarasota Row owner selling complex

Move comes amid corporate shift in strategy

A planned change in corporate direction is prompting the Daytona Beach-based owner of the Shoppes at Sarasota Row retail complex to bring the 59,341-square-foot project to market.

Consolidated-Tomoka Land Co., which acquired the Whole Foods Market-anchored complex in downtown Sarasota in 2014 for $19.1 million, has retained commercial real estate brokerage firm JLL to sell the asset ahead of a planned portfolio shift away from land and multi-tenant retail holdings.

“Investments by real estate investment trusts tend to be highly, highly focused, and that’s what they are working toward,” says Carson Good, managing director of JLL’s retail capital markets team, which oversees sales of projects throughout Florida and Puerto Rico.

By the close of its fiscal year 2019, Consolidated-Tomoka hopes to reduce its multi-tenant holdings, as a percentage of its portfolio, from 16% to just 3%, according to its website.

The Shoppes at Sarasota Row, which also includes a Starbucks, Write On Sarasota, Pecky Interiors and Paint Nail Bar, is one of five properties Consolidated-Tomoka hopes to shed in the next year, the company says.

The Sarasota project, at 1451 First St., currently generates 3.7% of the company’s net operating income, according to company data.

The company hopes to raise up to $125 million from the sale of its multi-tenant properties.

JLL has not set a minimum bid for the 3.9-acre Shoppes project, which was completed by Casto Southeast Realty Services in 2005 as part of a public-private partnership with Sarasota city government.

The 15-store complex is currently fully leased. Whole Foods, the project’s largest tenant, has a little less than five years remaining on its lease.

Good says JLL will collect bids on the Sarasota shops until early December, with the aim of completing a sale sometime in the first quarter of next year.

“Urban retail is pretty hard to find on any scale in Florida,” Good says. “Sarasota is an affluent market, and this is an unusually successful Whole Foods, so this situation is pretty unique.”